Ambush
My father was killed on my birthday.
More precisely, I was born on the ninth anniversary of his presumed death. He has his obituary to prove it. For him, my arrival that day was more than a coincidence. It was nothing less than a symbol of his personal victory over Hitler, over Stalin, over fate. As my delivery approached, it seemed not only natural but also inevitable that my birth would occur on the anniversary of his horrific day. It closed the circle. That date, death had brushed my father with its wings, held him in its talons, and then, feeling him struggle, let go. For years, my father had avoided those memories. But as he paced the hospital corridor, smoking furiously, he found himself back in the forests of northern Germany, reliving the ambush. As he listened for the first cry of the newborn, he heard the shouts of dying comrades. He sat down, overcome by memories. Suddenly he was a Polish officer again, about to embark on a desperate mission.
It was February 1945, and the snow that carpeted the borderlands of Poland and Germany was beginning to melt, baring a dismal, dripping forest landscape. It was a thinly populated area of boundless woods bisected by narrow, mud-churned lanes choked by military traffic. After a whirlwind advance through western Poland, the Red army under Marshal Zhukov had crossed the old German frontier a week earlier. But the offensive had run out of steam in the face of stiff opposition, and the Russians were regrouping. Command cars and motorcycles skidded down slushy roads, weaving their way past an endless column of trucks and requisitioned vehicles crawling toward the front. Tanks rumbled slowly forward; heavy artillery drawn by tractors lurched into position for the next offensive. The Russian steamroller was about to move again, this time with Berlin in its sights.
For tired Soviet troops, it had been a relentless two-year trek from the heart of their violated homeland. That winter, they had battled their way through ruined Poland, liberating flattened cities and blackened remains of deserted villages. Now, they were encamped on German soil, eager to give the enemy a taste of his own medicine.
Lieutenant Eugene Olesiuk - Gene to his friends - shared that desire. He knew he was lucky to be alive. There had been many times in the past six years when he thought he might not make it. Of course, Olesiuk was not his real name. Two years earlier he had shed that and his Jewish identity to stay alive under Nazi occupation in a far away Cossack village in the Caucasus. Hardened beyond his 26 years, he was an artillery battery commander in the Tadeusz Kosciuszko brigade.
Though its soldiers wore Polish uniforms, they were under the firm operational and political control of the Red army. Most of the top commanders were Russians of Polish ancestry or simply Russians who happened to have Polish-sounding names. Lt. Olesiuk was in charge of 70 officers and men, assorted armaments and a number of 152mm cannons -- some of the heaviest guns in the Soviet armory.
The next day, February 7, dawned cheerless as only a north European winter day can be. The temperature had risen a degree or two overnight, but it felt cold. The damp worked its way like a pickpocket's fingers under the soldiers' greatcoats. The snow was wet and slushy under a leaden sky; trucks had mashed parts of the road into a stew. There were still some patches of ice about, and the tractors pulling the big guns slithered from side to side. Officers yelled at the drivers to be careful; if one of the cannons overturned, operations would be held up for hours.
Gene's troops gathered early. "Keep your eyes open out there," he heard someone shout as he swung himself into the truck next to the driver. "Reports of snipers ahead." He stowed the violin under his seat and tossed Mark's other things into the back.
For the first mile or two, the road was clogged with trucks moving as slowly as a funeral procession. Gene's men dozed in the back. At prearranged intervals he ordered them to drop a roll of telephone cable for Mark and his men to pick up. Otherwise there was little conversation. There was a bottleneck across a narrow bridge, and it took an hour to get across. There were fewer vehicles on the other side. Almost immediately, Gene heard shots. "Snipers," several men shouted nervously, ducking. Gene swore but stayed upright. "Go faster", he ordered the driver.
Another mile down the road, there were more shots from the woods.
A bullet whined overhead, sounding ominously close. The countryside was flat, crisscrossed by shallow gullies. The trees were as bare as skeletons, their branches gnarled and twisted. Ditches lined the road on either side. They came to a junction. Gene glanced down at the map. "Here, turn right here," he ordered the driver.
Three miles down the road they reached another intersection, where an old German hunting lodge stood beside a stream. A solder in a Polish uniform was waiting. Gene recognized him as a member of Mark's battery. "What's happening?" he called out.
"You've got to go straight on here, sir, " the man replied.
Gene consulted the map. "But we're supposed to turn right," he objected.
"There are snipers that way. I've been sent here to warn you. There's another road you can take a mile or so to the right. I've just come from there," the soldier replied.
"Shouldn't there be warning signs on the road?"
"They haven't had time to put them up yet."
"Very well." Gene ordered his men to drop a roll of cable at the crossroads for Mark's men to collect. Then he motioned to the driver, and they rolled slowly down the road.
Gene was uneasy as soon as they pulled away from the hunting lodge. There was no traffic at all on the new road. "This can't be right," he muttered. He took another look at the map, trying to figure it out. Could the solider at the crossroads have been mistaken? It seemed unlikely, but still.. The road was unnaturally quiet. He had an empty feeling in his stomach. "Slow down a bit," he told the driver. "I want to see if there are telephone wires about." There weren't any. He was about to order the driver to turn around when he saw two soldiers in Polish uniforms walking down the road in his direction. "This must be the right way," he thought with relief. They drove on.
In the back of the truck, the soldiers had come to life. They knew they would soon arrive at the observation point. Someone made a joke, raising a general laugh. They went round the corner. Gene propped the map up against the windscreen and leaned forward, looking for the turn that was supposed to be ahead. Suddenly the woods on either side erupted. ,"Go full speed, pass them," he yelled at the driver.
Too late! A bullet grazed the back of Gene's head, hitting the driver in the ear. He heard the thud, blood showered over him. The driver slumped forward; the truck stopped. They were immobile, sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. What do you think about in the moment of your death? Nothing, there isn't time. He heard shouting and screams. It was faint, unreal. Soldiers reached for weapons and began firing back. Gene managed to wrench out his revolver and get off one shot at the unseen enemy . But that was all. A bullet thudded into him with tremendous force, then another. He was thrown sideways and forward. He dropped his revolver. He was falling, sinking into blackness. Another bullet hit him somewhere, and yet another he couldn't tell where. It wasn't him any more, not his body, not him. He slumped to the floor of the cabin. He was drowning. The shots were fading; he couldn't hear them.